Only If For A Night
by Saloma-Kiwi
Summary: Upon the final stretch, Shepard is exhausted. There is only one thing left to finish-and Thane is calling. [inspired by a Florence and the Machine song of the same name] (EDITED 9/1/13)


Shepard had never believed in impossible odds.

But now—hordes of abominations, a sky dark, air thick with traces of oily smoke. Mud sloshing beneath the boots of her companions, the sickening hiss of a heat sink as it pops to the ground. Gunfire no longer registers in her ears: it is as common now as a breeze among trees, the hum of a drive core, yet the air is filled with the shots of both friend and foe, sharp sounds echoing over the brick of old London architecture, now crumbling beneath the onslaught of the greatest war earth has ever known.

She lies prone on a tank empty of missiles. The other vehicle, several feet behind, is full, EDI working diligently to allow the simple ammunition to fell the Reaper but a mile ahead, focusing its beam on their little street. The scent of charred buildings and flesh is heavy.

It should be simple to hold position until the AI is finished.

It is not.

She is starting to believe.

The shriek of Banshees is deafening, husks, Cannibals, Marauders, and Brutes pouring in from every street; Alliance squadrons in the area radio in with apologies, regret at being overcome.

Commander Artemis Shepard does not need fucking apologies. She does not need regret.

She needs results.

She counts on her team for these. Garrus and Javik tear through the first wave of husks, defending her position, a Vindicator beating a steady, pulsing rhythm with its three-round bursts, a severe green luminescence rends air and enemies. Bullets whistle overhead, and these she does hear, because the sound is of use—no sense in letting her shields go down any more than necessary.

There is a Banshee in her crosshairs.

She exhales.

In her ear: "Siha."

The shot pulls wide.

"Thane?"

"Concentrate, Siha."

"_Shepard!_"

She pumps her rifle, lines up the shot, squeezes the trigger. The round tears a hole through the Banshee's empty eye socket; it gives a burbling screech as it goes down. Never fails to set Shepard's teeth on edge.

"Thanks," Garrus grunts over the comm, successfully reloading his rifle in time to deal with the two husks rushing his position.

The sentiment reaches her ear—the left—quite unlike the voice she had heard at her right.

Shepard can feel the heat from the Reaper's beam on her cheeks—suddenly regretting her custom open-face helmet, but damn, her visor alone couldn't have done the trick, and the full-face regulation helm would interfere with her interface—as Javik rolls to avoid the path it carves through the street. The heat from the beam dries the air near it instantly, bringing a harsh, stinging edge to each breath.

"Commander! Another Brute approaches from the west." The Prothean's armor is stained with mud and blood—blue, red, grey, green. It is difficult to tell what blood is theirs anymore.

"On it." She shifts, keeping her head down, armor catching and scraping on the steel of the tank. The bitter smell of blood, iron, and greasy smoke burns her nostrils.

She peers through her scope, giving a rapid double-blink to zoom her interface an extra fifty feet.

There are lips at her ear again.

Shepard grits her teeth, fixing the creature's fringed head in her sights as it lumbers forward. "Thane, you're—"

"Breathe, Siha. Exhale."

She does. It has been a long time since she could deny him.

Shepard pulls the trigger. Pumps. Re-aligns. Fires again. The Brute drops with a heavy slosh through the oil and water pooling in the street.

The Commander rolls out of cover as the Reaper targets her tank, whipping the butt of her rifle into a husk's skull, firing her Carnifex into a Cannibal; she dives into an open storefront, boots crunching on the shattered glass as she lands. The pistol returns to her side, and Shepard braces her rifle amongst the remains of the glass on the sill. She executes a Cannibal on Garrus' six with little effort.

A warning: "_Your_ six, Siha."

Shepard pierces a Marauder's chest with her omni-blade. It burbles and strikes her shoulder. Grunting, she dispatches it with a slash across the throat, the scent of blood and steel and acrid flesh meeting her nose. Never again. By the gods, she would find a way to make the full-face helmet work with her targeting system.

She resumes her position crouched behind the rifle. She takes account of precisely what she has just done.

She could not have heard or seen the creature on her own.

And Thane—oh, Thane was quite dead.

_What the Hell?_

"I will not leave you here alone," is the explanation, gentle voice rumbling just as it does each night before sleep when she visits her memories.

_Fuck—I'm going insane. _

If she manages to find beauty in the way Garrus and Javik continue their lethal dance across the battlefield, in the way the Reaper's beam reflects on the barrel if her rifle, all color and light and improvised movement that continues in a balanced waltz as she exhales again, finds her mark, counts her heartbeat—then it's just another symptom of the madness.

* * *

Shepard's heart races as fast as her legs, fighting for balance on the uneven terrain. Sovereign's beam is faster—the scent of charred flesh pierces the air amongst the screams and battle-cries, the grating sound of the Reapers' call as it scratches the inside of her skull. The protest of her muscles. There might be thunder—was it rain or simply an illusion, because there should always be rain at a time like this? The end of all things, a race for survival. The ground shakes. Gravel shifts beneath her boots. Her footing falters. A whole squadron races toward the beam, its harsh light reflected in their visors. One falls—no one hears his cry, and their helmets filter his burning stench.

All this is but a scene. For Shepard, there was nothing but the run, the beam, Thane's voice in her ear again:

"You will make it, Shepard."

A tank enters her field of vision—she slides, rocks and gravel crunching beneath her armor. Metal clips the top of her helmet, glances off; she rolls to her feet.

Garrus and Javik are not behind her.

She runs.

The screams have died down. She stumbles, stones flying over her boots, air suddenly dry—too close.

"Concentrate, Siha."

She hears neither the turian nor the Prothean.

"Concentrate."

Strange that the Butcher of Torfan should need to be reminded.

Stranger still that she should glance behind, and be struck by the beam.

* * *

"_Siha._"

"Shepard—Shepard?"

She answers Thane's call first. It's really too bad that Anderson believes the reply for him, and her lover remains silent.

Her responses are reflexive. There is a pull on each of her limbs, and Shepard has stopped registering pain, but her body does not obey as readily as she would wish. She limps through halls littered with bodies, dripping with fluid that her mind wished to deny was blood.

Shepard accepted it where her mind would not, as her boots brush pools and they tug delicately at her feet. Water does not cling.

"There are worse things than death," she says over a pile of corpses.

She was walking the halls of a Collector ship—Thane and Garrus beside her.

"We must keep alert." The assassin was keen; she trusted his instincts.

The air was thick with tension—without a doubt, it felt like a trap.

But no—she is on what remains of the Citadel. That was some time in the past, a memory creeping over her conscious mind and her surroundings like a light mist rising from a lake—early morning, pale sun filtering dark through the clouds, up over the line of trees, her mother was at her shoulder—

No. Maybe she was developing Thane's solipsism in her old age. Gods, how many more stairs?

_Gods, how many more years?_

"Siha, you must concentrate."

Of course.

Anderson. Anderson stands just ahead—he can fix the Crucible, and Shepard—Shepard can rest, but—

The Commander tenses. Too late—she feels icy fingers gripping through the warm haze of her mind and she becomes acutely aware of just how much damage her body has taken. The Illusive Man steps between them, gloating, but he looks like Hell. This is something Shepard believes she can exploit.

A memory of Saren pricks the back of her mind; something possesses her to try reason first. This earns Anderson a bullet.

The Butcher of Torfan has gone soft.

His rage is easy enough to incite—it makes his grip on her mind sloppy. She fires her pistol. The Illusive Man falls at her feet.

Shepard does not know if anyone can hear her or even cares, but a prayer asking forgiveness for her hesitation is in her mind. She sinks down beside Anderson, knowing there is little hope for his rescue. She believes he knows, too, as they gaze at the earth below. When his breathing slows, she does not beg him to stay, not when she is so desperate to go. Her lover is calling.

No matter the destruction going on above, the seas still show a deep blue, clouds swirling like sea-foam over them. He said he would wait across the sea. She wonders if it would be anything like those below, or if, perhaps, a spiritual sea would be different, clearer, greener. Black as his eyes. Shepard lets the heaviness settle over her mind and her limbs again—she relaxes her senses to sink into it.

"_Siha_."

Hm?

"Shepard—Commander!"

She hisses, opening her eyes. "What do you need me to do?"

The strength is gone from her limbs.

"Nothing's happening. The Crucible's not firing. There's got to be something on your end."

She shifts her body forward, but she cannot make herself stand.

"Commander Shepard!"

That voice is nothing to her. There is only one she wishes to hear—he has been calling since the beginning.

"Shepard!"

She is drifting—the sensation touches a memory of her first death—but there is comfort here.

"_Siha_."

* * *

Shepard was rudely awakened again to destroy the Reapers. There was no room left in her to question this AI-child, the Catalyst. It existed. She accepted this. There was no time.

She stands now before the control panel the thing told her would fire the Crucible and guarantee the Reaper's destruction. There will be consequences, but there are always consequences. The Commander had accepted that long ago.

Perhaps all too well.

The Butcher of Torfan. Sealing the death of an entire species. Watching Jack swept away by Collector swarms. Destroying a relay and nearly taking another entire species with it. Mordin. The Geth. Anderson.

Thane had asked forgiveness for her sins. Did they cover the newest? Her death count was higher every day. She remembers the prayer book Kolyat had given her, now tucked under her pillow on the _Normandy_.

She raises her pistol.

"_Kalahira, mistress of inscrutable depths, I ask forgiveness. Kalahira—whose waves wear down stone and sand—"_

She will finish this.

"_Kalahira, wash the sins from this one and set her on a distant shore of the infinite spirit._"

She pulls the trigger.

_"__Kalahira,_ I do not promise that my heart is pure; I have always been beset by wickedness."

She pumps the trigger again. The air is suddenly dry, oxygen drawn from her lungs. She manages the next line:

"_Guide this one—_"

She pulls the trigger. The flames lick her skin, the shrapnel slices.

_—__to where the traveler never tires._

The darkness is deep and swift after the glow of the fire. The rhythm of blood and breath are no more. The water is cool on her skin.

Thane smiles. "_The lover never leaves_."

Shepard's heart fills with a joy, wholeness she has not felt since last she heard the prayer, and she must reply: "_The hungry never starve._"

His lips are upon hers.


End file.
